After the Fall
by misinmyname
Summary: 7 men who have loved Inoue Orihime.


I know, I know, it's been forever, but... gah. You don't want to know.

This story is about the seven men who have loved Inoue Orihime. All of the characters are cannon, so there are no children involved, only the situations are imaginary. The Teen rating on this is just for the last person on the list of seven.

I had a lot of trouble writing this, especially the last part. I'm still not too happy with it, but it's better than the first four (not exaggerating, there were four) tries. I hope you all enjoy this as much as I enjoyed coming up with it.

**Emmy**

1. Inoue Sora

She always loved hugging him.

It was amazing how quickly such a little girl learned how to walk, and soon thereafter to run, in order to get to him and hug him. It couldn't have made him happier.

He loved hugging her to.

There were happy hugs, when she was happy and hugging everything she saw. It was quite funny to watch her around random strangers, hugging whoever she thought looked nice. The people were usually nice about it, too. They would act as though they weren't surprised, but there was always a jump when they felt arms wrap around their legs, if only for a moment.

There were the "I missed you" hugs, the ones that were more common when she was little, which would involve her running, jumping into his arms, and squeezing as tightly as she could with her little arms. They used to happen all the time when she was little; he would go to work, come home, go to pick her up, and find himself suffocating under the wrath of his little sister's love. He didn't mind it, though, not for a single second.

There were the excited hugs, which he also knew to mean "thank you," which usually entailed a lot of wiggling. She would jump up and grab onto his shoulders, onto his lap if he was sitting at the time, grab hold, and start dancing in her seat, often giggling out an incandescent spew of high pitched thank you's and I'm so excited's and so on. He would just stand (or sit) there and laugh at her, his beautiful little sister, who he loved and who loved him.

Then there were tired hugs, which were his favorites. They were rare, though. They only happened when she fell asleep somewhere besides in her own bed. He would carry her to bed, and in her slumber, she would hug him, mumble in her sleep. She was always beautiful when she slept. She would grab the front of his shirt, her little fists balling to pull herself closer to him, and sometimes, she would wake up, if only for a moment, to whisper "I love you, nii-chan," before she fell back asleep, never to hear his reply. He suspected that she never remembered saying anything, but it was one of his favorite things in the world, to hear her say that, as if it was the only thing she would ever have to tell anyone, that she loved he nii-chan.

Goodbye hugs were the worst. He got them every day, and somehow, all that they did was make him depressed. He had never been a cheerful man, after all, only a realistic one. He couldn't help it, he'd just seen too much hope be flushed away to be alright with saying goodbye.

No, Inoue Sora didn't like goodbye hugs. They were often loose, weak. Orihime was often barely awake when she gave them, and therefor they lacked her usual enthusiasm. She would often smile up at him when she hugged him goodbye, but it was always a little less perfect than her usually sunny bright grin. She always told him to have a nice day, too. As if he could have a nice day without her there. He never told her this, of course—what kind of a man would admit to such a thing—but he always thought it to himself.

He didn't realize how much he needed them, though, until he didn't get a goodbye hug one morning before he went to work. He left that day thinking about how much he desperately needed a goodbye hug every morning, trying to comprehend how much happier he was when she gave him that little morning embrace every day. He didn't notice the light change, didn't know that there was another car until he should have been unable to think.

The final hug hurt. Not because it hurt him, but the opposite—it fed him. His damnable hollow self got perverse satisfaction out of eating his own sister. The last hug hurt her, and that was something unforgivable. Beyond unforgivable.

He had wanted to kill her, to make her feel how much he was suffering. How dare he. How dare he hurt her like that, his sister. He loved her so much, how could he do that?

But she was hugging him again, he realized. It didn't matter if it was for another person's sake, she was hugging him. Oh, how he had missed the feeling.

"Have a nice day, Sora-nii." And she smiled, and oblivion wasn't such a bad thing after all.

She had hugged him again, and that warmth seeped through him and guided him back.

2. Abarai Renji

She was a weird chick.

That's all that there was to Orihime. She was a chick with big boobs who daydreamed a lot and had a power that involved flying fairies and shields.

Nobody in the world had ever filled the criteria for weird so well.

She was nice, though. Not many people had that quality, Renji knew. She had risked her own neck several times over to save Rukia, who she barely knew. She had saved many lives over and over again. She was a good person. A good, weird, person.

A human.

She was still alive, of course, and perhaps that's what kept him from getting to know her better than he did. He liked her, as a friend, of course. She was reserved for Ichigo, he knew, in the back of his mind. Not that he would have gone for her anyways, he only had eyes for Rukia, but... he liked her.

The first time he ever had a one-on-one conversation with her was after Rukia had been freed of charges, during the recovery period. She had gone to see Rukia, and Renji had been there. She'd tried to back out of the room when she saw that someone had gotten there before her, but he stopped her. Rukia had been asleep, anyways, so it didn't matter.

"Thank you, Abarai-san," she'd said as she sat down in the chair across from Renji's, on the other side of the bed.

"Of course," he replied. She gave him a smile, and they both looked silently at the Rukia, in the bed between them. She didn't look bad, just... well, tired. Renji wanted to slap himself across the face. No shit, Sherlock.

"are you alright?"

Renji looked up to see her looking at him. "I'm fine," he answered back, more than a little bit gruffly. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just look a little red is all. I'm sorry, please forgive me." She gave a little bow of her head and looked back to Rukia's face. Renji said nothing, but kept looking at Orihime. Such a strange woman...

"Why?"

She looked over at him. "What?"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you save her?"

She smiled at him. "I had to, there was no other option open to me."

He was angry now. Not yelling yet, but he had to work to contain himself. "What do you mean, you had no choice? Why did you save Rukia?"

"I told you, I had to, I had no other choice. It was that or do nothing."

"You're just a human, why couldn't you just do nothing?"

"Because Ichigo had to help her. If Ichigo had to do it, than I had to do it."

"So you helped Rukia because Ichigo asked you to?"

She looked sad, so sad. "No, I helped because Rukia was important to Ichigo, and therefor important to me. And I can't allow those important to me to die. It happened once, but never again." She looked sad still, but now she wasn't looking at him, but away, as though seeing something from another plane, another dimension of existence.

There was another few minutes of silence before Renji cleared his throat again, unable to bear the quiet. "So," he began, and Orihime snapped out of her daze. "She means nothing to you, but everything to Ichigo?"

She smiled at him, a gentle smile, as if she was explaining something to a child. "No, she is my friend as well. But if Ichigo hadn't gone for her, I wouldn't have had the strength that I did, and she wouldn't have been saved. Who he deems is important is important, who he deems worthy of care is worthy, and who he deems a friend is a friend. Rukia was worth giving his life to save, and was therefor worth mine as well."

Renji huffed. "It's a lousy reason to give your life, for a mutual friend."

She tilted her head as she looked at him. "Do you really think that? If it had been you, I would have done the same thing. Would you still think the same way you do now, if you had been the one about to die?"

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Everything."

"And what the hell does that mean?" He was really getting angry now, and had to try hard not to raise his voice, to wake up the sleeping Rukia.

"Exactly what I said. You are important to Rukia, who is important to Ichigo. If you were to be executed, then Rukia here," and she gestured down to the bed, "would undoubtedly go after you, which means that Ichigo would too. He would be single minded, as you know perfectly well. If he went, if you were worth his life, than you would be worth mine." She had been slowly rising up out of her chair as she said this, her expression growing more and more uncharacteristically sharp, her voice louder. But she calmed herself down and settled back into her seat when she finished, looking back at Rukia's face.

"Nothing," she almost whispered, "nothing that is worth his life is unworthy of mine."

There was silence again. "You really believe that, don't you?"

She looked up at him and smiled, and it was kind again, and gentle. "What is my life for if not the service of my friends? Nothing is worth more to me than them, than you. What better reason do I need to sacrifice my life for?" She looked back down.

"Don't sacrifice your life," he said, and she looked up, surprised. "Yours is worth at least a dozen of mine."

And she smiled sadly at him. "I wish that were true," she said. "But the only thing that is worth my life is the preservation of his, and his dreams." And her smile brightened into a grin, almost like a cheshire cat. "What other reason do I need?"

Renji said nothing. "Would you do the same for someone that Rukia cared for? If she went to save someone who you barely knew... if she risked her life to save me, would you help her?"

And of course, there was only one answer.

Yep, she was one weird chick, all right.

3. Yasutora Chad

Chad had no idea why she was really so important to him. He hadn't known her very well before the whole Soul Society ordeal, and, frankly, he didn't get to know her so well even then, having been going solo most of his time there. He, like many people, only met her through Ichigo, a mutual friend.

She was pretty, that was a given. Chad didn't notice girls that much. Well, not the way a normal teenage boy would. It wasn't his fault that he didn't like them, he just thought that boys have their own beauty, one that women lack, a beauty that he liked more. He liked the determination that boys always have do get what they want and get it now. He liked their attitudes.

She was pretty, though. He understood that. He always had an acute understanding for what was pretty, what was attractive to who and why, so he understood that she was cute, why boys liked her. She was nice, too. Smart. A complete ditz, but one of the rare ones with honest intentions.

He liked her for that.

She brought the good out of people, he came to realize. She didn't like conflict, she didn't have a talent for it. She was too gentle for fighting. If he had been into girls, Chad always thought that he might have fallen for her, or a person like her. Someone gentle. Someone kind.

As he got to know her, Chad began to think that she was a kindred soul to his Grandfather. It was a strange connection, but there were too many similarities to ignore: Neither liked to fight, and were, in fact, peaceful people. But they were both also strong for others when that had to be, tough when they had so be. Neither could truly bring themselves to raise a hand to kill or even really hurt another for their own gain. Orihime could hurt only when another's life was in danger, and even then, it was difficult for her, against her character, just as it had always been for his grandfather, his abuelo.

He went to rescue her from Hueco Mundo because of Ichigo.

A promise was a promise, and his promise to Ichigo was one that he would never break, not if he could help it. He knew that he was failing, though. He knew that Ichigo would surpass him, and the thought was always a sad one when it came to Chad. If he was honest with himself, he had liked Ichigo, perhaps more than he should have. But it wouldn't have happened. Ichigo was straight through and through. It wasn't anybody's fault, it was just how they were. Friends, the best of friends, and he, Chad, doomed to be left behind.

Orihime, though, never left him behind.

She stayed with him, talked to him. She was the first person to realize that he was gay. He didn't have to tell her, she just asked him one day and he told her the truth, that he thought that men were beautiful. Rather than looking disgusted, or confused, or even leaving, she just sat there next to him, agreeing. "I know," she'd said. "They are so beautiful, and they can't even see it."

He had nodded, not realizing the full implications of her words. They weren't looking at each other, but were both staring ahead. She turned towards him. "You are too, you know," she commented shyly. "Beautiful, I mean. Someday, somebody will see how beautiful you are, and your strength."

"But nobody who will want me to love them."

"Hey!" she sounded almost scandalized as she stood up and stepped in front of him, hands on her hips, mouth in the most adorable frown he had ever seen. "You won't get anywhere with that attitude, mister. Nope, don't you dare get all depressed. There's always someone!" and she started hopping and dancing in place, spinning and tripping and falling and hitting the sidewalk, which promptly knocked her unconscious. He sighed and picked her up to carry her home.

Perhaps she was right, he had realized on that long walk home after she had woken and shooed her out of her apartment. Maybe there is someone.

She was right. She was always right. But more than that... She was his friend.

4. Urahara Kisuke

He'd always been a sucker for beautiful women. Not the subtly beautiful, not the artistically beautiful, not the classy beautiful, not the proud beautiful. They are women who are sought after for their minds, he has no use for them. He loves women, really beautiful women, with curves and hair oddly colored eyes and big lips, pale or exotic skin, beautiful smiles. Many such women are thought of as sexy and left at face value, but Kisuke understood that their beauty caused their suffering. A cliché, of course, but the truth: beauty hurts.

That was how he met Yoruichi, the person who he held in the highest respect of his mind. She had been disregarded by many as a beautiful face and a wealthy name, left on her own to try and prove them wrong. And he had taught her how to fight. He had seen that she was in pain, and he had saved her. He still loved her, Yoruichi.

Something similar happened to Kisuke when he met Orihime Inoue. She was very beautiful he noticed right away. But she was different than Yoruichi. She was subtle. While Yoruichi was like a hammer, pounding away at whatever got in between her and the final destination, Orihime was like water, quiet, patient, and always successful in the end. People saw her, noted her beauty, and moved on. Few people understood that her beauty went beyond that.

She was a soldier.

It was a strange thing to say about a girl who was so notoriously gentle by nature, but it was true: she was a soldier. All women are, Kisuke knew, especially the beautiful ones. The ones with minds that are ignored suffer far more than those whose bodies are ignored, and those who are ignored are always in pain. And pain on the mind is always worse than pain of the body.

Orihime, he knew, was always in pain, just as Yoruichi had once been.

Orihime, though, was quiet. She smiled, just as every woman smiles. She laughed, just as every woman laughs, never letting in on her emotions. Kisuke is rare in his ability to read people, to read women. He sees them, how they think, what affects them.

Kisuke loved women. All women. And Orihime had always been one of his favorites.

He tried to protect her. He weighed her abilities, weighed the enemy, and made a decision. It was wrong, and he had failed. He never forgave himself for it, despite that she survived and all was well.

He remembered her face when he told her that she wasn't needed. He saw the beauty in her face, how she took the news. Not in the cold manner of a woman of class or the graceful way of a woman of art or the refined talent of a subtle woman, but as an honest, understanding, kind woman who had suffered but didn't care to tell anyone about it.

He saw the surprise. The insult. The anger. The fear, the sadness, and, in the very end, the resolve. Not the resolve to disagree, or to argue her case—she knew that she would lose such an argument—but the resolve not to let anyone see her misery. And in that moment, when everything crossed her face at once, he saw how much of a soldier she was, how beautiful she was.

And how much he would do to protect her.

5. Kurosaki Isshin

Isshin prided himself on any number of things: His children, of course. His wife, Masaki, what a woman, was on the very top of the list. But the one thing that Isshin was never able to brag about was his memory. He would never, every, be prideful about what he could remember.

He remembered everything.

It was a very sad position to be in, as a doctor. Every doctor loses patients of course, and every doctor lives with the memories. Isshin, though, had a memory that never forgot, a memory that was infinite, and, because of that, he never forgot. He was always reliving the times when this person had died, or that person's mother cried. Every bad memory was fair game, and few things are harder to forget than a little girl crying over the death of her big brother.

It was a car crash. Not uncommon, not even as painful as many ways that the man could have died. No less tragic, of course, but not as bad as it could have been. No, what was bad about that man was his little sister, young enough to be his daughter, who sat by his bed the entire night crying over her nii-san.

Few things are so painful to watch, or so unforgettable. The girl sat there all night, crying, begging him not to leave her, saying that she was sorry, that she should have told him this morning. Told him what, Isshin didn't know, but it didn't matter. In that moment, nothing in the world mattered more than that little girl crying in floor of a room in his clinic. Children, he knew, were not meant to cry. Not like that, at least. Not in that kind of agony.

He spent the entire night outside the door, peeking through the window, looking at that sad little girl as she begged for her brother.

She fell asleep sometime in the early morning, sagging to the floor, her hand still on the bed. Isshin entered the room when he was sure she was gone for good, and wrapped her up in a blanket. He carried her up to his apartment, his home, and set her on the couch to sleep. He went back down and dealt with the body, making the arrangements. He would pay for anything that he had to, he knew. He promised himself that the man would get a fine grave if anybody ever did.

When he got back upstairs, the girl, Inoue, he knew her last name was, was still asleep. She was mumbling in her sleep, rolling around. And no wonder, he thought. She must have been having a nightmare. He went to her, intending to wake her up, but stopped himself. No, it wasn't a nightmare, just a dream. He fought back a sigh. He would wake her up if it became a nightmare.

He went to the kitchen to make her something. He didn't know what to make, wasn't even thinking about it, didn't even notice the absurd collection of food on the plate. His hands hadn't asked his mind what to do, they had just thrown together some random packages and vegetables. He went back to the living room, where she was, and set the plate down on the ground beside her head, sat in another chair, and waited for her to wake up.

Isshin felt himself get tired. He had been up all night, not so rare for him, a doctor, but not good anyways. He hadn't the energy to move himself to wake up, though. He just sat there, head between his knees, willing himself to stay awake until the morning came.

His son came down first, yawning, trying to get himself ready for another day of school. Amazing how the world could go on when a girl was crying like this one had been.

"Who's that?" He mumbled through a yawn, one eye open while his hand tried to rub the sleep away from the other. Isshin didn't answer. "wait..." he muttered, trying to place her, "She's the girl from last night, with the brother..." He looked up at Isshin, who nodded. "What happened to her brother?"

Again, Isshin said nothing.

"I see." And his son looked sad. He understood. Isshin would have been proud of his son if the boy hasn't been so young, or at least less experienced in the life of mourning. But the past was the past, and there was no saving Masaki now.

A moment of silence, then: "Is there any food?"

Isshin looked up, surprised. "I don't know, I don't think I have time to cook this morning (his son gave him the "I know you're just trying to get out of it" look, but let it slide), so you'll just have to find something yourself." Ichigo nodded and went off to the kitchen. There was the sounds of cabinets opening and closing, the refrigerator, the sink. Isshin almost didn't notice when the girl stirred. Almost.

She sat up slowly, and the blanket fell off of her torso and onto her lap. She turned her head slowly to look at Isshin, more awake now than he may have every been in his life. "Who are you?"

"I'm Kurosaki Isshin," he said. "And who are you?"

"I'm Inoue Orihime. Where am I?"

"Do you remember anything about last night, Orihime?"

She looked thoughtful for a minute. "Well, I remember getting home before Nii-san," she began, "And I was going to make some food for him, because he's a big boy, so he's always hungry, and..." she trailed off for a few moments, only to look back up at him, wide eyed with horror.

"No." A pause, and then: "Please tell me that didn't happen," she begged, "Please tell me he's still alive."

"I can't, Orihime. I'm sorry, but I can't."

She looked miserable. "I see," she said, her voice amazingly calm for how young she was. "will you excuse me for a moment?" and she ducked down beneath the blanket again, clearly crying, clearly trying not to scream. Sounds from the kitchen stopped; Ichigo was listening in.

"Orihime," he said, and he heard a pause in the wailing. "Orihime, could you come out for a minute please?"

There was a pause, and the little girl emerged, wiping her face with her bare arm. "Orihime, I need you to eat something, okay? You need water, you've lost too much of it crying. Come," and he lifted a glass of water and the plate of food from the ground by where her head had been. He gave her the water and she drank it all down, not getting any of it on her face. She looked ravenously at the plate of food, only to look back up at him, confused.

"Wasabi and leeks?"

"What?" Isshin looked down at the plate to see, low and behold, wasabi and leeks. How the hell had that happened? He looked back up at her, a bit scared to see her reaction. She was just a little girl, after all, and probably didn't understand the concept of politeness well enough. But he needn't have worried.

She was looking at the plate with a curious expression on it. "I wonder how that will taste," she said, and took a leek, slathered it in wasabi, and stuck the whole thing into her tiny mouth. Isshin had to stop himself from laughing. She took her time to chew and swallow, and looked back up at him.

"You know what could make this really good?" she said. "Peanut butter."

Howling laughter came out of the kitchen, and Isshin had to fight back a smile.

"What?"

"Nothing, it's alright, Orihime. You just made my morning is all."

As much as Isshin always hated that memory, it was one of the most often recalled. It had a happy ending, which was rare enough. It was sad, it was raw, and it was of a beautiful little girl who he saw many times for the rest of his life, always smiling, and always having a weird combination of leeks, wasabi, and peanut butter.

6. Ishida Uryuu

In today's forward-thinking society, it was very rare to find a woman who still liked to sew. That was the first thing that drew Uryuu to her, that she liked to sew. She was talented at it too. Slow, but talented. She once knitted five yards of fine lace. Now, granted, knitting is not sewing, and it took her six months, but it was beautiful, and well made.

It went with her well. Slow, but beautiful and incomparable to anything else.

He didn't talk to her much. He didn't talk to anybody. He never knew what to say. It's not like small talk was a good idea, or even worth the effort. No, it was better to just keep his mouth shut. Nobody would like to listen to anything he had to say anyways, he convinced himself.

He was a nice man at heart, he told himself. He was just jaded. His life had made him the way that he was, it wasn't his fault, just society's. He was the victim, he told himself over and over again, day after day.

He was always aware of her. It was unconscious, but it was always there, like a whisper in his mind. He always took note when she entered a room, always knew where she was supposed to be at any given time. He knew everything that he could know about her without ever really meeting her, and he wasn't even aware of it.

The first time he talked to her besides a simple greeting was to deny her something. No, he wouldn't be going to help Kurosaki, thank you very much. He couldn't, he had said. He had his own problems.

In truth, he was going to help her, but she didn't need to know that, not yet anyways. He had no other choice—he couldn't deny her anything. Even if he hadn't been about to go after Kurosaki on his pride alone, her asking would have done the trick any day.

He went, of course. She had been surprised to see him. Happy, but surprised.

It took a week with her to realize that she wasn't doing this for Rukia, but for him. _Him_. Ichigo. Kurosaki Ichigo, the bastard. How Uryuu hated the man, the boy. Ugh. He was such a drag on him, a Soul Reaper, a bastard, a freak of nature. He had dragged her into this, this mess, this hell. She should never fight. He should never have brought her into this.

But Uryuu knew better. He knew that Ichigo wouldn't have been able to stop Orihime no matter how hard he tried. Uryuu knew that Ichigo had had no say in what was happening, and was only trying to stop an execution. And just because he knew it didn't mean he liked it.

Bastard.

It took Uryuu a long time to get over the fact that Orihime didn't like him. To her, he was a friend. He was not Ichigo, he would never be, and she would never see them the same way. He accepted it. He moved on. Ichigo was a good guy, after all. He had nothing but good intentions.

She loved him. I lover her, she loved him, and he was oblivious, and did nothing but make mistakes.

Uryuu constantly thought back to that day—night, whatever—in Hueco Mundo, and her face when she asked to go above the dome, and how he couldn't deny her. He knew what she wanted, and he couldn't find it in himself to tell her no. He had to do as she asked. He very quickly wished he had not.

The look of terror on her face was a look that should never exist, not on anybody, but especially not her.

She had screamed, cried. She had, for the first time since Uryuu had met her, completely lost her mind. She had had no strength left, and that sight, that very idea, frightened him more than anything else in the world ever had. And in that moment, he understood.

She wasn't perfect.

It wasn't that he didn't know that she had weaknesses, he had always understood that as well as anyone. What hurt him was the realization that she was, as a person weak. She had always been strong, had always saved him, had always been his ideal woman. But now he saw...

He thought she was ugly.

He, drenched in his own blood, thought that she, a crying, desperate girl, was ugly.

He hated himself right at that moment. He hated his own disgust, and, when he realized what he had done, he made himself a promise: he wouldn't fall in love with her. He did not have the right to do that. For that one moment, when she was ugly, he hated her. If that was all that he could see, then he did not deserve it, did not deserve her.

He never fell for her. Ne never let himself. In fact, he never fell for anyone. It was the price that he forced himself to live with. He never regretted it, either.

7. Kurosaki Ichigo

She reminded him of his mother. It's hardly surprising—people are known to look for their parents in their spouses. And Ichigo, for everything that made him different, made him special, wanted nothing more than to be normal. He would have been perfectly content living his life as a regular person, with a regular family. So the idea of falling in love with a woman who was similar to his mother wasn't particularly alarming or repulsive, it just... was.

It's not that Orihime was a carbon copy, by any means. There were differences, as there always are. Orihime, for example, cooked the oddest foods known to man, while his mother had been the model household wife, a Mary Poppins with a home instead of an umbrella and carpet bag. Plus, he didn't remember his mother all that well, at least not like he could remember Orihime. To him, his mother was an idea, while Orihime... she was reality. His reality.

He often argued with himself about what was his favorite thing about her. That would bring up categories, which would often be between sex, appearance (which often melded together, strangely enough) , personality, and her odd habits. Oh, he could list her weird quirks for days, how she liked the rain more than anything, how she hated her body, how she ate odd foods, dreamed the most bizarre things, and how she never, ever, planned anything in advance. That, Ichigo supposed, could be his favorite. Spontaneity. Every man's dream, and here he had it, with the sexiest woman on the planet.

And oh, the sex was great. It sounded so cold to say it like that, but he just loved her body, so much more than he could explain. He always sounded like a pervert when he thought about it to himself, but it was true. The woman was sexy, and God how he loved it. His legs, he thought, were his favorite pare of her. She was always sensitive there, and they always framed her in a way that just seemed so graceful, despite their often more than awkward positions. Everybody else was all about boobs, and of course he liked them, but... it was all about her legs.

He didn't love her body the most, though. He loved being around her. Just being there was enough, to experience her thoughts firsthand. She was all he needed. Her smile, her attitude, her... everything. Her soul, as strange as it sounded, was so much to him, so vital to his survival, he didn't think he could live without it. It was worth protecting her from everything just so thats she would live for his sake, so he could live as well. Life without her was not truly worth living, better lonely than with someone else. The very idea of another always made him want to vomit, but it also brought with it a wave of determination, His name was not Strawberry, it was One Who Protects, and, so help him God, he would live up to that name if it killed him.

She'd always had that ability, to motivate him. It wasn't something that she did intentionally, at least not all the time, but it was a habit of sorts. She would do something, or say something, or even just be the victim, and his determination would spike and everything would become okay. He didn't even consider the effort the hard part. The determination was difficult, and thats what she gave him: a reason, and the will, to do what he had to, for her.

When they grew older together, things became simpler. He was always thankful for that—his youth had been wild, too wild. All that he really wanted was to live out his life in quiet. They moved north, to a smaller island. Their children grew and left, starting their own lives. And The two of them were content, always content. They worked together, neither of them scared, neither of them ever having any reason to be scared. They were each other's reasons for everything, so why should they be scared?

In truth, Orihime didn't have so much in common with his mother. They were both the center of his universe, and they were both the most important women in his life, but Orihime was alive, still here, still real to him. She was what he needed more than anything else in the world. She was a center of gravity, one who had suffered, just like he had, and one who saw him the same way. That was all that they needed as they grew old, as life grew simple. They were content.

Age brought with it understanding as well as simplicity. Understanding led them to peace. And peace? That led them into eternity.


End file.
